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The War and Peace full-frontal debate: where do you stand?

Fans of BBC 1's War and Peace got more than they bargained for on Sunday night with a male full-frontal scene and more bare bottoms than you can shake a stick at. If you didn't see the episode, we bet you heard about it. So what's all the fuss about? Two writers go head to head.

BBC

PUT IT AWAY, says comedian Viv Groskop

Heavens to Betsy. As Mary-Beth famously said in the opening credits to Cagney and Lacey when accosted by a flasher on the streets of New York: "Put it away. You don't know where it's been." Bozhe moi! (OMG in Russian. You never know when it will come in handy.) Be gone, quivering manflesh, before I choke on my Sunday night buttered crumpet.

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Don't get me wrong. I do understand that this was a national watercooler moment that brought us all closer together. We all remember where we were when we saw our first BBC1 penis. And, like many others, scarred for life by the blue glow of BBC1 on the evening of Sunday January 31st 2016, I will never forget it. One minute I was admiring the knobs on Prince Andrei's full dress uniform. The next I was blushing like Natasha Rostova being ravished in the opera box by the creepy gloved hand of Anatole Kuragin.

This was a very BBC way to do male nudity - out of the blue, half-heartedly and with the guts of a mouse.

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Could it have been less monumental, though? Blink and you'd have missed it. All 0.7 seconds of male full frontal action as Prince Andrei's regiment prepared for the Battle of Borodino by having what my grandma would have called a cat lick in a lake. My heart went out to the actor Oscar Pearce as he did rather seem to have drawn the, er, short straw. No offence, Oscar. I know it was springtime in Lithuania and the water was chilly but...

My complaint is not about explicitness per se. It's more about the rather apologetic way in which it flashed (sorry) momentarily onto our screens and then shrivelled away (sorry) as if it had never been there. This was a very BBC way to do male nudity - out of the blue, half-heartedly and with the guts of a mouse. Either it's out and proud and you're really putting it in our faces. In an artistically justified way, of course. Or you might as well not bother.